“A Magical Meadow” is one of the outstanding stories of the first biannual International Short Story Contest 2017 written by Aroosh Kaleem, USA.

A Magical Meadow

There was a little girl named Caroline. Her father was an architect. One night her father opened the door and said, “guess what, I found a perfect place for our new house”. “That is great!” said her mother.

At bed time Caroline wondered where this amazing place would be. The next morning she woke up to a bright day. It was a wonderful day to go out. “Oh dad, can I see where this wonderful place is?” asked Caroline. “Why not, we’ll go after breakfast”, replied her father.

After breakfast they went to a beautiful meadow. Now, Caroline loved nature, she started running with joy. She loved how the cool breeze swept her long black hair. She then asked, “Dad, where are we going to build our new house?” Her dad replied, “We are going to cut down the meadow and build the house here”.

Caroline was sad while walking back home. The meadow wasn’t far from her house. She ran to her room, sat on her bed and took out her diary. She wrote all her thoughts in it. She wrote,

“Dear diary, I can’t believe that the beautiful meadow is going to be destroyed to make our new house. The animals will lose their home and the beautiful plants will be gone forever. I can’t let this happen”.

She told what she had written in her diary to her dad. He took a deep breath, “Caroline, you are right, I will talk to my builder and see if we can build our house somewhere else. Caroline was very happy. She hoped that the builder would agree. Dad called the builder and they talked and talked and talked. After a while dad put down the phone sadly. He walked to her slowly, sat on his knees and apologized, I am so sorry Caroline, the builder cannot change the location.

Caroline’s heart was shaken. She stood up and went to the meadow, sat down in the soft grass and sighed. “You tried your best”, said a voice.

“Who are you?”, asked Caroline.

“I’m Tiny the tulip”, said the voice. “Everybody thinks I am too tiny to do anything. But I want to show them that I can do great things”, said Tiny.

Caroline suggested, “You could show them by saving the meadow. I have a plan, if you can get the whole meadow to say, this is our meadow and we won’t let anybody harm it. Then may be our plan will work. The builder will come with his workers tomorrow, to get started”

The next morning when the builder arrived, he heard voices, as they got closer they heard, “this is our meadow and we won’t let anyone hurt it.

The builder screamed, “This is a magical meadow and I can’t build the house here”. Thanks to Caroline, her father and this wonderful meadow. Everybody was happy and had a big picnic to celebrate.